House projects and getting settled

This fall, Nathan spent a lot of time outside working in the yard getting the grass healthy, trimming trees, and bushes, and landscaping, while he had time off of work until the end of September.

The first picture is the backside of the house. Nathan trimmed the apple tree in the middle and date tree on the left side, planted bushes alongside the back of the house, and spent a lot of time mowing and watering the lawn. 

He trimmed all the bushes and trees in the front of the house, planted new bushes along the walkway and front of the house, and hung an American flag.

We had the front door and shutters painted from brown to black, and had the outdoor light fixtures swapped out from gold to black. The new landscaping and fresh paint brightened up the house a lot.

We have two very productive persimmon trees in our yard that produced way more fruit than we knew what to do with, so we invited people to pick the fruit. This sweet fruit is very popular amongst Koreans, and they would come to our home with their own ladders and pickers to make sure they got every last fruit that was ready for picking.

A few days before Nathan went back to work and a little over a week before I went back, we received notice that our shipment from Turkey  was here and available for delivery. We were anticipating it arriving in late October/early November, so it was a welcomed surprise. We got used to living off of minimal stuff the past few months. Receiving our stuff is always a blessing and a curse, and like always we purged as we unpacked. We were mostly unpacked by the time I went back to work, aside from several straggler boxes of photos, large pictures to store away, and one more run to Goodwill.

Shortly after, we had our deck redone and a patio installed. Our deck had several soft spots and part of the frame needed to be reinforced. It was mostly a one-for-one redo, but we did upgrade the railings from white wood posts to black aluminum, and it made a big difference in its appearance and visibility from the deck. We also had lights installed on the deck and patio, and an access door built into the deck lattice to store items underneath the deck.

Starting the excavation for the patio. The patio was built within a few days, then the team took a few days to very carefully build the sitting wall out of individual stones. The craftsmanship was impeccable, it was impressive to watch.

When the patio was complete, Nathan planted bushes around the edge of the sitting wall. 

He and the workers did a great job on all the projects.

And we had a little over a month to enjoy the patio before winter set in.